Putin croons like Sinatra: Top 7 marquee moments

Sinatra-like Crooner

Vladimir Putin showed his gentler – yet still suave – side Dec. 10 at a charity dinner in St. Petersburg, taking the stage to tickle a piano's ivories and croon into a microphone.

In front of an audience of businessmen and Hollywood stars, he played the opening notes to the 1940s jazz standard "Blueberry Hill" on the piano, then stood and took the microphone and sang in pretty decent English, reported Reuters.

He got a standing ovation from Kevin Costner and Goldie Hawn, who were in attendance along with Sharon Stone, Kurt Russell, Gerard Depardieu, Mickey Rourke, and others. “Like an overwhelming majority of people, I can neither sing nor play but I very much like doing it," Putin told the audience.

UPI reports that "Putin has been showing a softer side lately. Last week he invited the 5-year-old winner of a nationwide competition to name his new Bulgarian Shepherd puppy to his official residence to meet the dog. Buffy was a present from Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borissov."

With Prime Minister Putin considering a run for presidential office in 2012, incumbent President Dmitry Medvedev may have to consider learning his own musical instrument if he wants to hold on to his seat. A participant at the event told Reuters: "Medvedev will now have to learn to play saxophone."

Formula One race car driver

He's galloped and flown, and now Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has zoomed. On Nov. 7, Mr. Putin put the pedal to the floor of a Formula One race car, reaching 150 m.p.h. on a track outside St. Petersburg. He drove a yellow Renault and wore a helmet emblazoned with a double-headed eagle.

A fan of car racing, Mr. Putin last month helped with Russia's bid to host its first Grand Prix race in 2014 – the same year that Russia will host the Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Never shy to promote his feats, he told reporters after the Sunday drive: "For a first time, it was good." News agency RT was at the track to video Putin's performance:

Whale-tracker

Putin, normally keen to show off his muscles, dressed warm Wednesday when he went whale-tracking off Russia's east coast, in Olga Bay in the Sea of Japan. He joined members of the Kronotsky Biosphere Reserve studying the endangered gray whale.

Photos showed him perched at the stern of a rubber boat and holding a crossbow, which he used to fire a special dart to get a whale's skin sample.

"There was a real feeling of exhilaration," he told reporters afterward. "I missed three times but hit on the fourth attempt."

When questioned about the risks of riding over the rough seas, the former KGB spy reportedly answered: "Living in general is dangerous."

Firefighter

Putin swung into action in July as more than 600 brush and forest fires swept across western Russia. He was front-and-center on evening TV news broadcasts, whipping officialdom into shape, reassuring the population, and holding televised meetings in which he upbraided lax local officials and promised rapid and generous state assistance for the fire victims.

Putin also literally took to the air as copilot of a Be-200 amphibious fire-fighting aircraft (see video here) that scooped water from a lake and dropped it onto two forest fires.

"This is Putin's personal style, he likes to show that he's everywhere, that he can do anything," Alexei Mukhin, director of the independent Center for Political Information in Moscow, told the Monitor at the time. "And all indications show that this works. Russians feel reassured to have such a leader, and they miss Putin as president. You can see it in their eyes."

Animal hunter

Lions and tigers and bears don't frighten Putin.

He has shot a Siberian tiger with a tranquilizer gun, released leopards into a wildlife sanctuary, and come hand-to-paw with the world's biggest bears.

In April, he attached a satellite-tracking collar on a tranquilized polar bear in Franz Josef Land, an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean off the northwest coast of Russia's mainland. Wearing a bright red coat and cap, Putin reportedly helped elevate the beast for weighing, measure its length, and roll it onto its side.

On his departure, according to the Associated Press, he shook its paw and uttered the words: "Be well."

Judo master

Call it Judo diplomacy, perhaps. During a 2003 state visit to Japan, Putin showed off his judo skills to students at the Kodokan Institute in Tokyo.

The Judo black-belt is reportedly known for his Harai Goshi (sweeping hip throw). Maybe you can learn the move if you read his book: "Judo with Vladimir Putin."

Putin is president of the Yawara Dojo in Saint Petersburg, where he first began studying martial arts in elementary school.

"I think that there is more to it than just sport," he told NPR in 2001. "I think it's also a philosophy in a way, and I think it's a philosophy that teaches one to treat one's partner with respect. And I engage in this sport with pleasure and try to have regular practices still."

Bare-chested outdoorsman

Putin apparently enjoys showing the world some muscle – literally.

In 2007, he entertained Prince Albert of Monaco on a fishing holiday to Russia's Altai region. One photo from the time shows him bare-chested while holding a fishing pole. His attire was combat trousers, a camouflage hat, and army-style boots. The famous scene has been immortalized in Russia with a Putin-gone-fishing doll.

In August 2009, he vacationed in the rugged Siberian region of Tuva. Photos showed him riding a horse and swimming the butterfly – which is considered the most difficult of all swim strokes – in an icy river. In both cases he was, of course, bare-chested.

"There are also problems with the [butterfly]," the Guardian wrote then. "It may have a fug of raw, sweating masculinity about it, but it's also the most irritating of all strokes. It's splashy and unsociable, an uncompromising stroke that pays no heed to the elderly gentleman choking on chlorinated backwash in the neighboring municipal lane.

"And so, as ever with these propaganda pictures, it's tempting to look for deeper meaning. Isolationist, prone to aggressive display, and not afraid of making waves: could Putin's fly also be a kind of aquatic metaphor for the way his Russia is heading? And if so, what does the one where he's feeding a horse mean?"